Standing Committee A

[Mrs. Irene Adams in the Chair]

Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill

Ian Bruce: On a point of order, Mrs. Adams. We do not have the second part of the Hansard report of our proceedings on Tuesday. It is therefore impossible for members of the Committee to refer back to that debate.

Irene Adams: The matter is being investigated and the Hansard report will be in the Room as soon as possible. Clause 11 Television and radio broadcasting

Clause 11 - Television and radio broadcasting

Yvette Cooper: I beg to move amendment No. 47, in page 5, line 28, leave out from `Broadcasting' to `section' in line 29 and insert
 `Corporation or Sianel Pedwar Cymru (the Welsh Authority referred to in'.
 This minor amendment would remove a misprint in the Bill, which refers to the British Broadcasting ``Authority'' instead of the corporation, and set out the full name of the Welsh fourth channel authority. Both the BBC and Sianel Pedwar Cymru are excluded from the scope of the Bill. BBC services are regulated by its board of governors while the Welsh fourth channel—S4C—is regulated by the Broadcasting Act 1990. Their exclusion is in line with the decision to exclude from the scope of the Bill those broadcasting services that are already well regulated by statute or charter.

Caroline Spelman: I welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Adams. I have not served under your chairmanship before, and I look forward to doing so.
 I thank the Minister for her explanation of the amendment. It would clarify which Welsh broadcasting authority is covered by the Bill and correct the original reference in the Bill to the ``British Broadcasting Authority''. The Minister said that the BBC was regulated by its board of governors. The amendment would correct an elementary matter; I am surprised that the reference to ``Authority'' was not noticed when the Bill was first drafted. However, I have been a member of Standing Committees that have debated Bills containing many more elementary mistakes than the Bill that we are currently debating. Parliamentary draftsmen are under enormous pressure, and mistakes can happen. 
 The Minister will know that, occasionally, we are concerned about the role of the governors of the BBC and about their fulfilling the requirements placed on them. Although we associate advertising almost exclusively with those commercial television channels that are legitimately allowed to advertise, some of the problems that have arisen under other clauses of the Bill that deal with product placement are just as much a problem in BBC programmes. Unfortunately, such matters are not regulated sufficiently tightly by the Bill. We are requiring the governors of the BBC to be far more vigilant than previously in ensuring that tobacco advertising that might fuel the prevalence of smoking does not slip through. We see product placement on television despite the ban on commercial tobacco advertising. I would like the Minister to impress upon the governors of the BBC that the BBC is affected. They may say that they do not, and never have, carried any tobacco advertising because the BBC does not run advertisements. However, when programmes are being vetted, precautions should be taken to avoid letting through other forms of advertising that we know to have a potent effect on young people. 
 I do my level best to stop my children from watching soaps because I have severe misgivings about the values that are imparted through them, but children coming home from school often plonk themselves down in front of the television and watch soaps in which role models openly smoke. That is an illustration of how product placement can creep in. It was a grey area when we debated it. Although there may not be official sponsorship agreements between television stars and tobacco companies, the potency of seeing a revered television star smoking on screen is enough to inspire young girls to take up the habit. 
 I remain concerned. I do not want the amendment to go by without putting on record my concern about the new responsibility that will be placed on the governors of the BBC.

Ian Bruce: I may want to speak further about the clause in the clause stand part debate. I am concerned about how we define what the BBC is, not least because BBC World is broadcast on satellite television. The BBC is being encouraged through the new communications White Paper and the opportunity to earn money other than that which it receives from licence payers, to separate out its duties. I am worried that unless one defines the BBC, it may be able to carry advertising that the Government do not intend, especially if its programmes are beamed overseas.
 If one goes down and looks at the BBC's facilities for making programmes for transmission on satellite channels in other areas—in Europe or in the United Kingdom—there is a man with an automatic machine, which feeds in a pile of cassettes with all of the different programme items. The transmission is beamed via an uplink to a satellite. That satellite zooms it over to another satellite and it comes down in China or wherever. Every 15 minutes or so the programme stops, and the advertisements are dropped into the programme breaks in those countries that are receiving the transmission. The whole delivery may be the responsibility of the BBC, or an independent television company. 
 The original name of the BBC was the ``British Broadcasting Authority''. Now the better-known name British Broadcasting Corporation is being included in the Bill. We must be careful what we are defining. As I understand it, the Government are trying to ring-fence what is paid for by the licence fee. The Government are telling the BBC that it must set up separate organisations, which I think are different, specific legal entities—limited companies, or even public limited companies. Those organisations are separate from what we know as the BBC of today, which is paid for through the licence fee. Activities such as running extra digital TV channels distributed by satellite, which may all have advertising in them, will be dealt with in a different way. I am happy to have a chance to analyse that; yet again a Government amendment prompts me to consider an issue, which is what exactly the BBC is now. 
 It may well be that the British Broadcasting Corporation controls what we know as the BBC, and also controls something like BBC World, which has a different remit and be financed in a different way. It may be financed by sponsorship, and is almost certainly financed by advertising. Have the Minister's ever-vigilant staff been thinking about that?

Caroline Spelman: That is an interesting line of inquiry. Has my hon. Friend considered the reverse traffic? What happens when the BBC imports programmes from countries in which tobacco advertising is not so strenuously regulated? What responsibility will it have in such situations?

Ian Bruce: I do a good deal of policy work on communications and it is my view, increasingly the Conservative party's view and even, dare I say, the Labour party's view, that one cannot have different regulations for the BBC than for any other broadcaster, because the BBC is no longer just a terrestrial broadcaster with two channels. It has a large number of channels—[Interruption.] It is so nice to know that the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) is ready, chuntering away in the background.

Irene Adams: Order. The hon. Gentleman is going a little wide of the amendment; perhaps he would pull his argument back in.

Ian Bruce: I was about to sit down, Mrs. Adams. It is always difficult to keep track when a Committee member keeps a running commentary that is always too low for me to hear, but which is obviously designed to distract. Unfortunately, Mrs. Adams, you have not been here to see the Trappist tendency among Labour Members again. They do not want to put anything on the record and certainly do not care whether we track what we are supposed to be tracking.

Ernie Ross: I had the misfortune to serve on the Select Committee on Employment with the hon. Gentleman for many years. All his self-righteous nonsense amounts to exactly nothing.

Irene Adams: Order. Can we come back to the Bill now?

Ian Bruce: We are on the Bill. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is still on the Employment Select Committee in his own mind; I think that it threw him off some while ago. He has had a distinguished career on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs; he is well known for that.
 My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden was trying to direct attention to the fact that we have separate regulation for the BBC and for all those other organisations—which is relevant to the Bill, if I may say so, Mrs. Adams. We need to be sure that the amendment is proper, given that the Government are attempting to stop tobacco advertising on the airwaves, whether by the BBC or any other broadcaster. The Minister may want to draw the provision even wider; she may consider that before the Bill returns to the Floor of the House on Tuesday.

Yvette Cooper: I belatedly welcome you to the Committee, Mrs. Adams, and apologise for not having done so when I first spoke.
 The amendment is straightforward, simple and is merely a minor wording amendment, but I shall try to address the questions that members of the Committee have raised. The amendment's purpose is to ensure that services already regulated by broadcasting Acts are not doubly regulated, and to deal with overlapping regulation. The Bill, as amended, will exclude services regulated by statutory codes issued by the Independent Television Commission and the Radio Authority under the Broadcasting Acts 1990 and 1996 and the BBC. The services regulated by those Acts include ITV, channels 4 and 5 and public teletext as well as cable and satellite programme services—when the person who provides the service is established in the United Kingdom—digital terrestrial television, restricted services, BBC commercial services and independent radio. Services that are not covered by the Broadcasting Acts include cable text, in-house broadcasting—in shopping malls, for example—and closed user services. Services not covered by the Broadcasting Acts are automatically covered by this Bill. The combination of the two should cover all the areas in which we have territorial jurisdiction, and where we are able to cover it. 
 Product placement is an issue that causes concern, but it is covered by the statutory codes and the Broadcasting Acts, which state that product placement of tobacco products should not be permitted on either channel. If there were any breaches of those codes, I would be interested to hear of them, to ensure that they are properly pursued. The codes that exist should be properly enforced, whether by the governors of the BBC or the Independent Television Commission. 
 The Bill is not intended to ban smoking on television; it would be wrong for us to seek to do so, and it is not Government policy. However, we intend to ban tobacco advertising, and that is clearly the intention of the Bill and the statutory codes. 
 Amendment agreed to. 
 Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Caroline Spelman: I tried hard to make a distinction between the debate on the amendment and the stand part debate, by leaving aside any discussion of the Independent Television Commission and Radio Authority until now. Amendment No. 47 caught the BBC, and its role. However, what I want to say follows on from the Minister's speech to that amendment.
 I find unsatisfactory the Government's approach to the change in law under this clause. They say that the Bill needs to deal only with the services not covered by the Independent Television Commission or the Broadcasting Acts. There is a problem with approaching the question of tobacco advertising from that minimalist perspective, however. It is not working very well at the moment in relation to the other authorities. Commercial television channels can legitimately advertise; that is how they raise their revenue, and how they can afford to make their programmes. The problem of product placement is just as acute in those independent television channels. 
 Like all hon. Members, I do not have much time to watch television. By the time we leave this place at night, there is little left to watch. However, on the occasions when I do, I find that there has been a slide. Even on BBC programmes that are not supposed to advertise, products appear blatantly, and for long periods. As an intermittent television viewer, I sometimes comment to my husband, ``My goodness, they are getting away with blue murder there. That product has been in the foreground of the picture for a very long time.'' 
 There seems to have been an imperceptible slide in that direction, and the same is true of product placement. The nub of the problem is that ``advertisement'' has not been defined. We are dealing with an incredibly fine line. I realise that it would be unreasonable to ban people smoking on television, because, as far as possible, television tries to portray real life, and people smoke in real life. However, product placement is a subtle subset of that. 
 We had a similar discussion in relation to films, especially films from Hollywood that contain blatant product placement. Our television channels, including the BBC—the licence-funded channel provider—and the independent channel providers, show Hollywood-produced films in which blatant product placement occurs, and that is a powerful tool. I believe that we would all agree that young people who enjoy the cinema and revere cinema heroes are affected by such subliminal advertising on television. 
 I am worried that, in considering tobacco advertising in the context of television and radio broadcasting, we are skating over the issue superficially, without tackling problems. We could have nobbled the problem of product placement earlier in the Bill. I do not believe that the phrase ``product placement'' appears in the Bill, although I may have misread the Bill, and perhaps it does. 
 We need to signal to the television and radio companies that produce and compile programmes that anxiety has been expressed about product placement and what I have described as the slide in that direction. Although the Bill may send a signal, so long as it remains without a definition of advertisement, a grey area will remain about what constitutes advertising, which has been one of the Bill's weaknesses from the outset. 
 I hope that now is the time to raise the issue. This is a stand part debate, and we reserved discussing television and radio until we reached clause 11. However, the matter relates to other parts of the Bill. The approach to the construct of the Bill is, ``Well, it's okay because the independent television and radio producers are already regulated, and the Broadcasting Acts already deal with the regulation. There is just a little bit left that we need to cover.'' I am not sure that that will do the trick. We need to send a much stronger signal to the different authorities identified in the Bill, which will now effectively have a censorship role. We are asking them to reconsider the content of their programmes and pay more attention to the question of subliminal advertising and product placement. To help them do that, we need to define what constitutes an advertisement. 
Mr. Ian Bruce rose—

Irene Adams: Order. Before I call the hon. Gentleman, I inform him that copies of the Hansard report of Tuesday's proceedings are now available in the Room.

Ian Bruce: I am glad that we have that on the record. I have my copy of Hansard, and have noticed several errors, which, unfortunately, I have not yet been able to go through so that I can ask the Committee to take note of them. We might just about be able to discuss that this afternoon.
 I revert briefly to the issue of who controls broadcasting and advertising. We discussed previously why a Bill that effectively deals with Department of Trade and Industry and Department for Culture, Media and Sport matters is being introduced by the Department of Health. Although it is common ground in the Committee that serious health problems result from tobacco, which is why we are all keen for tobacco consumption to be reduced, the matter will be controlled by different Government Departments. 
 As is clear in the communications White Paper, the Government have not tackled the issue of who in the Government will be responsible for communications. They propose a single regulator, but the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will effectively deal with the broadcasting side, and the Department of Trade and Industry will deal with the more technical side and consumer affairs matters. It is important to know who is supposed to be controlling matters and who is supposed to be keeping an eye on what happens in broadcasting. Clause 12 deals with who will be the lead authority in checking such matters, but it is a difficult aspect. 
 In relation to product placement, now is a timely point at which to discuss once again the fact that the Government have decided not to define what constitutes an advertisement. As we saw in relation to a clause that referred back to the first clause, an advertisement is what it was in the first clause, and the Bill does not tell us any more. 
 I believe in listening to Ministers and taking their advice. The Minister kindly told us that an advertisement is what the dictionary says it is. I have a short version of the dictionary definition and a longer one; let us refer to the latter. ``Advertisement'' comes from the root ``to advert'', which means to refer to something. When I say anything about the Bill, I am ``adverting'' to it. The dictionary definition suggests that although the root of ``advertisement'' comes from ``advert'', normal usage of the word implies referring someone else to something. It is not just about ringing up one's local newspaper and saying, ``I'd like to put an advertisement in the newspaper, because I want to sell a bicycle'', or ``I want to sell some tobacco''. That is an advertisement, but there is more to advertisements than that. 
 Let me read the first definition of ``advertisement'' from the dictionary. It is: 
 ``The turning of the mind to anything; attention; observation; heed''. 
That is not the paid-for advertisement that the Minister thinks that she is dealing with. 
 The second definition is: 
 ``Calling the attention of others; admonition; warning; precept; instruction''. 
The third is: 
 ``The action of informing or notifying information; notification; notice''. 
On that definition, we start to come towards the kind of advertisement that the Government are trying to ban. 
 The fourth definition is: 
 ``A written statement calling attention to anything; a notification; a notice''. 
The fifth definition is: 
 ``A public notice or announcement, formerly by the town crier, now usually in writing or print, by placards or in a journal, a paid announcement in a newspaper or other print''. 
We must wait until we reach the fifth definition of ``advertisement'' before we arrive at what we thought that the Bill was about. 
 Clause 11 implies that a person who uses a cigarette or offers one to someone else in any broadcast material is caught by the Bill, because that is an advertisement for cigarettes. The Minister is dealing with an inadequate Bill. She is doing a good job of attempting to move it swiftly through our two weeks of consideration, but we still have not defined ``advertisement'' correctly. We have discussed several fundamental amendments each day, and I urge the Minister, when she refers to the Broadcasting Act 1990 and the codes contained in clause 11, to take care not to catch things that she has told us that she does not wish to catch. Because terms are not sufficiently defined, she may find that clever lawyers will approach the courts, saying, ``If it's all right to smoke on screen, because that has been accepted as okay, why isn't it all right for product placement, blatant advertising, sponsorship and everything else?'' I urge the Minister to tell the Committee how those important issues are being dealt with.

Yvette Cooper: I shall try to address the points made.
 The purpose of the clause is to prevent unnecessary overlap and complication between two parallel regulatory frameworks—one is the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill, and the other is the Broadcasting Acts and their statutory codes, which currently regulate the way in which the BBC and other television and radio services operate. The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of product placement, which we are concerned about in relation to tobacco and health. The codes already ban paid product placement of tobacco products. We would be extremely concerned—as would the BBC governors and the ITC—if we found a link between a television programme and a tobacco company for the promotion of the latter's product. Were there any concern or suspicion that such a link might exist, it would be investigated straight away. 
 The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) described her feelings as a television viewer. If she has anxieties about tobacco product placement in that context, I would be keen to hear examples and see that they are properly pursued.

Caroline Spelman: As a television viewer, how easily will I remember to which authority I must refer my complaint? Section 2(1)(b) of the 1990 Act refers to ``additional services which are provided from places in the United Kingdom''.
 To whom should I refer a complaint about product placement in an imported programme shown on a particular channel?

Yvette Cooper: The two focuses should be the BBC or the ITC's code of practice. I will happily give the hon. Lady the full details in that regard. Clearly, such product placement should be prevented and properly regulated under the existing framework.

Ian Bruce: I am sure that the hon. Lady, as a health Minister, thinks that there are just two regulators. A report from the European Informatics Market group, the all-party group on the matter, found 13 different regulators that deal with such broadcasting issues in the United Kingdom alone.

Yvette Cooper: Such issues are covered by the Broadcasting Acts, and a regulatory framework is in place. We considered whether we should try to regulate all those issues under the same framework and the same Bill. We decided that, because a regulatory framework was already in place for television, the right approach would be to make sure that this Bill covered all television services or additional services that were not already covered by the Broadcasting Acts. That is exactly what the clause does. It does not try to replicate or overlay an existing regulatory framework with a new one that might complicate it. It tries to cover all additional services to ensure a full and complete ban on tobacco advertising in this country.

Caroline Spelman: I genuinely do not know the answer to my question, as it relates to an issue that would be dealt with by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. Would it require eight complaints to be received to trigger an investigation? Currently, eight complaints must be received to trigger an investigation into bias.

Yvette Cooper: I cannot answer that in relation to the nature of the way in which the investigations take place. I shall be happy to find that out before this afternoon's sitting.
 The Bill's intention is clear: we want to make sure there is a proper system to regulate tobacco advertising. The Bill should plug the gaps that might not already be covered by an advertising ban. 
 The hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) asked whether the Bill should be progressed by the DCMS or the DTI. Life and legislation do not fit neatly into particular boxes. He obviously thinks it a shame that the Bill has implications for several Departments, but that, inevitably, is how a lot of legislation works. We are introducing the Bill because of our concern for public health and the 120,000 deaths that result each year from smoking and tobacco. The question of which Departments will be involved is something of a red herring. The important point is that we should get the Bill right, and there are clear health reasons to do so.

Caroline Spelman: I had hoped to catch the Minister before she sat down because this will be our last chance to talk about broadcasting. Can she clarify the situation as regards my point about imported programmes and the responsibility that television service providers have for their content? In the case of programmes imported from America, such as films that have blatant product placement in them, would the BBC be able to use the same defence as an individual and say that it had had no reason to suspect that the film contained product placement? Would the Minister regard that defence as reasonable in a case in which there was blatant product placement in an American programme?

Yvette Cooper: Certainly, those involved in the means of transmission may use the defences of not knowing, not being aware, or not having any reason to suspect. In the case of sponsorship agreements, the companies involved in transmitting or distributing films would only be affected, under the sponsorship clauses, if the purpose of what was done as a result of the agreement was to promote a tobacco product. However, if they were based in this country and involved in broadcasting an advertisement for tobacco, they would be covered, even if the advertisement had originated abroad.

Ian Bruce: The Minister keeps using the word ``advertisement''. According to the dictionary, ``advertisement'' means ``simply referring to'' tobacco. Will she deal with that point?

Yvette Cooper: We had that discussion many times in the debates on clauses 1 and 2 and several more clauses since. I have made it clear every time that the word ``advertisement'' in this sense carries its natural meaning. Clause 1 states that a
```tobacco advertisement' means an advertisement— 
 (a) whose purpose is to promote a tobacco product''. 
The main offence in the Bill, as set out in clause 2, relates to 
 ``A person who in the course of a business publishes a tobacco advertisement, or causes one to be published'' 
 or distributed. Our intentions have been made clear. 
 The Committee has discussed issues surrounding display, and will discuss them again when we reach the new clauses. We have also discussed how the Bill does not include freedom of speech or news reporting. The Bill is competent and adequate, and we have had quite enough debate to make clear the intention of the House on advertising. 
 Question put and agreed to. 
 Clause 11, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 12 - Enforcement

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Caroline Spelman: We are keen to discuss the clause because it relates to a completely different subject. Having arrived in the Committee at this stage, Mrs. Adams, you could not know that we have had no discussion on enforcement and have saved all our points on it for this debate.
 Enforcement is an important area. We share the Government's aim of trying to reduce smoking. We have our doubts about the Bill's effectiveness given that there is no effective control over the volume of smuggled tobacco coming into the UK. None the less, the enforcement authorities will be required to put the Bill into effect, and even its limited effectiveness will depend greatly on those authorities. It seems perfectly reasonable, therefore, to ask the Minister what the Government intend in terms of allocating resources to the weights and measures authorities in England, Wales and Scotland and to district councils in Northern Ireland so that they are able to enforce the Act. We have not raised that question before and now is the right time to do so. 
 When the Act comes into effect, it will be bound to create many cases, at least initially, that need investigation by the relevant enforcement authority. The Bill represents a big shift in practice as regards the currently quite legitimate advertising of tobacco products. Those who engage in the trade of buying and selling tobacco products and their accessories will have to adapt to a new situation in which it is no longer legal to advertise those tobacco products. During the earlier stages of the Commiteee, we sought on a number of occasions to clarify precisely what is an advertisement and what is a display, and we are going to receive some clarification on the latter point when we debate new clause 3. 
 There will undeniably be a transitional period during which those involved in the trade will try to adjust to the new law and work out precisely what it means for them. A lot of specific guidance has still to be given in regulations; effectively, we have an empty box into which the regulations have still to be placed. I have been very concerned that a number of small commercial entities that trade tobacco products, such as specialist tobacconists and corner shops in which 50 per cent. of the product is tobacco, may find themselves in the difficult position of having to go to court to clarify whether they are trading legitimately once the Act bans tobacco advertising. 
 The up-front cost to the weights and measures authorities concerns me. It would be extremely helpful to those who trade in tobacco products to have the assistance of the authorities in clarifying, in the early stages, precisely what the regulations mean. We cannot give any guidance because we have not seen the regulations, which will not be set out in the Bill. The rule of the enforcement authorities will be very important, and I am aware, from other Bills that have gone through this House and passed into law over the past four years, that we are expecting a lot of extra work from weights and measures authorities in England, Wales and Scotland and from our district councils. 
 The resourcing of the authorities is pertinent. We share an interest with the Government in that we want to ensure that those who will be affected by the Bill should have proper guidance, part of which will undoubtedly be provided by the weights and measures officers. 
 Why will Ministers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland be able to take over enforcement functions in some cases? Is that because no extra resources are being allocated to the weights and measures authorities in England and Wales? Is that the intention of the Minister's Department, given that a lot of up-front effort will be needed to get across the change in commercial practice that the Bill requires? What is the rationale behind that provision? Does the Department take the pessimistic view that the authorities are likely to fail in their task, and that the Department will need to be able to take over those powers if weights and measures authorities protest either that they do not have the required resources, or are not capable in some way. 
 The Local Government Act 1999 provides, in a similar way, for the Government to step in where local authorities fail to perform particular tasks, as properly measured. Does the Minister agree that it is important for the weights and measures authorities to know the circumstances in which her Department might muscle in and take over. That could be demoralising to someone who has been carrying out a new task in trying to bring about a change in commercial practice by stemming tobacco advertising and who suddenly finds that it has been taken out of his or her responsibilities. That could lead a local authority to think that it had not done well in the task, and was being criticised. It is important to spell out for everyone's sake, the circumstances in which the Department would take over responsibility. 
 Does the provision have anything to do with taking a case through to prosecution? Is some sort of two-tier role in operation, under which weights and measures authorities may check on where there may be a breach of the law, but the Department take over because of the cost of going to court and prosecuting. I am interested to know the rationale behind the provision.

Ian Bruce: My hon. Friend touches on cost, but the Bill puts a duty on every local authority—every district council—to be an enforcement authority. There is no requirement for the Minister take the costs off the local authorities, which must bear the costs, unless the Minister decides to take over.

Caroline Spelman: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. At the moment, local councils are of the opinion that more and more is being foisted on them, without the necessary resources. I am not making any sort of spending commitment by saying that resources are needed for enforcement. Health has had a large increase in funding, which we have said that we will match. Within that increase in funding, it should, logically, be possible to allocate the resources appropriate to making a Bill work.
 I should be interested to hear from the Minister how the provision will work in practice. We need to understand aspects of enforcement application before we can judge whether we think that the Bill will be effective.

Kevin Barron: I welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Adams, on this last day of our proceedings. On enforcement, may I first say to the hon. Member for Meridian that it is not exactly true that the Bill represents a big shift in what trading standards officers have to do, or that it creates is a completely new situation. The so-called voluntary codes have to be policed somehow, and policing fell on many occasions to local authorities trading standards departments.
 In 1994, it was decided to take tobacco advertising off shop-fronts, where it was soon replaced by Coca Cola adverts as far as I can remember. It was also decided to remove tobacco advertising from billposters in close proximity to schools. There is evidence, therefore, that some local authorities have acted as a type of police to ensure that the voluntary codes were adhered to. 
 As regards enforcement, the contents of the clause are not dissimilar to those in the Food Standards Act 1999. I chaired the pre-legislative Select Committee that considered that Act before its Second Reading. We took a great deal of evidence from different parts of the country from trading standards officers—or weights and measures, as the hon. Lady calls them. Different parts of the country have different forms of enforcement in relation to foods standards. It was quite clear that what was needed in that Act—I suspect that this is also the reason for provision in the Bill before us—was a power for someone to be able to take over if it were found that the trading standards authority, or other relevant local organisation, was not capable of doing a job that would give meaning to the Act in their particular area.

Caroline Spelman: May I put it on record that my constituency is not ``Meridian'' but Meriden, lest I should be confused with the television company? That is quite important in view of the matters that we have just discussed.
 I, too, served on the Committee that dealt with the Foods Standards Bill, and I clearly remember that, it spelled out the circumstances in which the enforcement authority could be supplanted by another authority. If a local authority was failing to perform its role of enforcement, it could be superseded. The difference is that the circumstances in which that could happen were spelled out in that Act, but are not in this Bill.

Kevin Barron: I apologise for getting the hon. Lady's constituency name wrong. I think that I was talking about clause 11 at the time, which is about television. It is not unusual for members of the Committee to talk about one clause when they are supposed to be discussing another one entirely.
 I agree, to some extent, with the hon. Lady. The Foods Standards Act was about policing. The other side of the coin is that the clause before us does contain powers. I have a question for my hon. Friend the Minister about subsection (5). Members may have noted recently, in the national media, the prosecution of people who were selling unfit poultry meat. Some of them went to prison, and rightly so. That prosecution effectively started in my own Rotherham borough. The trading standards authorities went to the south coast at some stage to take evidence and interview people in, I think, Brighton. 
 That was clearly a national scandal, and the cost of the investigation has been horrendous. Meetings have taken place between the authorities and central Government, but the costs of that investigation all fell on Rotherham metropolitan borough council. The investigation cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and was clearly national in nature. If it happened again, unless the rules were changed and money found to pay for such an investigation, authorities might be dissuaded from becoming involved in gathering evidence and prosecuting people who are breaking the law. 
 I would like to ask my hon. Friend whether subsection (5) will help with that? Investigations and proceedings in cases of breaches can be massively expensive. Would that be taken into account? That would clearly be an improvement on the provisions of the Foods Standards Act 1999, which were simply about making sure that local authorities, or whoever was responsible, were policing the food chain correctly.

Ian Bruce: It seems that we may all be voting against the clause. I am only too pleased once again to support the hon. Gentleman, even though he did not support his own argument last time we had a vote. The hon. Gentleman briefly mentioned the fact that trading standards is now the correct name for what old-fashioned people like me call the weights and measures authorities. The Committee will be pleased at his expertise, but is the Bill faulty? Is there no such thing as a weights and measures authority any more?

Kevin Barron: The hon. Gentleman will have to ask the parliamentary draughtsman about that. I use the phrase ``trading standards'' because that is what we have in our borough. Different parts of the country may have something else, and I am no expert on local government in Wales or Northern Ireland. I cannot really answer the hon. Gentleman's question.
 The hon. Gentleman invites me to vote against the clause, and I am not surprised that he wants to do so. If a Bill is not enforced, it becomes a non-Bill, and, given that the Tories tabled an amendment declining to give the Bill a Second Reading, I am not at all surprised to hear that they want to try again to kill the Bill. At each sitting, Opposition Members have said that there are loopholes in the Bill and that it will never be possible to enforce it. If that were the case, why would they want to vote against any part of it? The Opposition should be completely in favour of it.

Caroline Spelman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Kevin Barron: I am going to sit down. I am not against debate, but I would like to move on because I have other things to say later.

Ian Bruce: Strangely, we have had a really useful contribution from the hon. Gentleman, who pointed out yet another loophole in the Bill, but when we suggest that he helps us to force the Government to return with a clause that would deal with his concerns, he immediately replies, ``No, no, no. Let the Government carry on, let them be condemned by their own folly.''
 I am concerned about the clause, which contains many loopholes and reasons why the Bill will not work. The hon. Gentleman again misunderstands me. He was a co-signatory of my early-day motion when I tried to ban tobacco. I no longer feel that that is the right way forward—voluntary action would be better. We have to ask how the Bill's provisions will be enforced. The nub of the Bill is the enforcement of a set of rules and regulations that the Government have decided to introduce. It was extraordinary to discover from the expert who last discussed trading standards that weights and measures authorities apparently no longer exist. Does that mean that I shall be out of order if I discuss weights and measures authorities? I believe that my three district councils are responsible for that. 
 Most of the advertising that concerns us appears in the national press, the enforcement authority for which is provided by the Broadcasting Acts. It may be, however, that tobacco companies could decide to put a big advert on the side of their lorries. Those lorries are driven from one end of the country to the other on a regular basis, passing though every district council area in the country. That would mean that all those district councils had a duty to prosecute that company. If The Daily Telegraph is delivered in every district authority area in the country, and someone has placed something that looks like a tobacco advertisement in the newspaper, all local authorities would have a duty to prosecute. 
 That is a ridiculous situation. If a local tobacconist sets up an advertisement that it has paid for, one could say that there would be some purpose in asking the local trading standards office to warn that individual. That is usually the sensible solution: the authority tells the person that he is breaking the law, and normally the individual would remove the advertisement. It may be, however, that the individual says, ``No, I have read the Bill carefully, and I have been advised by the tobacco company that what I am doing is legal, and you are going to have to prosecute me individually.'' In that case, no special funding route has been set out to enable each local authority to prosecute such cases. 
 We should compare the situation with the weights and measures case that we have just had in the north-east. A man who wants to weigh bananas in pounds and ounces because his customers ask him to do so is being prosecuted—despite the Minister saying, ``Oh no, no, we wouldn't prosecute somebody just for responding to a consumer''. I understand that it has cost at least £200,000 to date to prosecute that individual for selling a few bananas to someone who asked for them in pounds rather than kilograms. That seems bonkers, but it is the mechanism that we are being asked to approve. I am being asked to say to all three weights and measures authorities, which is what they are called now, in my constituency—[Interruption.] I will give way to hon. Members who clearly want to make a speech. Or perhaps they do not. 
 Those three authorities in my constituency, and all the 100 or more local authorities throughout the country, must get on and start prosecuting. If the enforcement authority says, ``Look, we're strapped for cash at the moment, as all local authorities are,'' and councillors say to their enforcement officers, ``You may have a duty to prosecute, but if you expect us to keep piling money into your budget, you've got another think coming,'' how will the Government force them to police every individual advertisement or suggestion of an advertisement and challenge it in the local courts? It is nonsensical to set that down as a duty. The clause does not say that the enforcement authority may take action; it states that the authority has an absolute duty to take action. The relevant Government Department, whichever Department it is—I will come to that in a moment—does not have a duty to prosecute. It may decide to come in and take over or, if it wishes, prosecute a certain class of advertisement centrally. We are being asked to allow the clause to go through without being told what the Government intend to do. Regulations may already exist in draft form, setting out that any case covering more than one local authority will be picked up and paid for by a central prosecuting authority. 
 If an authority is to take action, someone has to decide who will pay for that. I cannot see my tiny authorities of Weymouth and Portland, Purbeck and West Dorset, which have tiny amounts of money, agreeing to pay. The recent case in the north-east cost £200,000, which to my authorities is a significant amount. The Government have taken over the banana-measuring case. I am sure that my councillors, of all political persuasions, wish to reduce tobacco consumption, but they would not incur the risk of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in court costs for a test case on behalf of the Government. The Minister needs to tell us how the clause will operate. 
 Subsection (3) refers to an ``appropriate Minister''. Who is an appropriate Minister? It is not defined in the clause. I would be grateful for a signal on that.

Yvette Cooper: It is in clause 19.

Ian Bruce: Is it the Secretary of State for Health?

Yvette Cooper: Yes.

Ian Bruce: I am shocked by the situation that will now exist. Every morning, officials in the Department of Health will have to check what is happening in consumer affairs, which are already monitored by the Department of Trade and Industry. An extra department or section of the Department of Health will have to be set up specifically to deal with tobacco advertising. That seems extraordinary. If that is joined-up government, give me silo government.

Caroline Spelman: The example of the Food Standards Agency has already been evoked. My hon. Friend did not serve on the Committee that considered the Food Standards Bill. It may help him to know that a piggyback arrangement, under which someone looks over the shoulder of the people who are carrying out the enforcement role, operates under that legislation. Initially, health enforcement officers from the local authority carry out an investigation, and the FSA enforcement officers look over their shoulders. It is quite a heavy structure.

Ian Bruce: I am grateful for that intervention. I apologise to the Committee for not having read sufficiently through the Bill, but I am even more concerned now that we have identified who will be responsible. I thought that the appropriate Minister would simply refer to an appropriate Minister in a Department that had monitoring arrangements in place, rather than to the Secretary of State for Health, who is a pretty busy man already.

David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman seems concerned about the possible appointment of extra staff in the Department of Health or elsewhere to monitor the compliance of advertising agencies and others with the proposed legislation. The Government estimate that about 2.5 per cent. of the 120,000 premature smoking-related deaths a year—about 3,000 lives—could be prevented. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that it is worth appointing a few civil servants to achieve that?

Ian Bruce: If a single life can be saved, that must be done. Clearly, we want to spend the money saving lives, but I am not dealing with that point. I thought that the hon. Gentleman would accept that I was asking who would be responsible for enforcement. I discovered that the Department of Health would be responsible, but it does not have the necessary mechanisms. It has controls in that it looks at what the British Medical Association does and various other matters. The Secretary of State for Health is constantly bombarded with various important issues relating to people's health—such as drugs, the Alder Hey problem and so on—and of course he is a very suitable person to deal with such matters.
 We are trying to determine who would be an appropriate Minister to keep an eye on what happens. There is a consumer affairs department within the DTI. I thought that it would be perfectly normal for that department to consider matters involving weights and measures—but apparently not. If I were a weights and measures or trading standards officer at a district council and I was concerned about what my duties were, I should be able to look to a single Department within Government. That is what joined-up government is about. I should be able to say, ``That is the lead Minister for me in my job.'' I should not have to go round with all the individual Acts of Parliament under my arm to ensure that what I did complied with those Acts, policed by individual Secretaries of State.

David Taylor: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, which is reasonable. On a point of correction, trading standards functions are carried out by county authorities and city authorities, not by district councils. Therefore, they probably will have the resources to undertake the role in a satisfactory fashion. I hope that, when my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) speaks to his new clause 2, he will see the merits of making that authority responsible for tackling the weaknesses that he flags up. I am sympathetic to that.

Ian Bruce: I would certainly be pleased to take advice. I have asked my colleagues which authorities deal with such matters. I have seen confusion in the past about whether it is the district or county authority, but we are still talking about a large number of authorities. In Dorset there are in effect three county authorities. There are two metropolitan councils, one in Poole and one in Bournemouth and there is a third council for rural Dorset, which includes my constituency.
 It is interesting that a group of us in the Committee are struggling to work out whether the relevant authority is still called the weights and measures authority or the trading standards authority and which is responsible for enforcement. Imagine what the public will think when they want to know whom to contact about a problem with tobacco advertising. 
 Getting back to the point about which Minister is the ``appropriate Minister'', I rather suspect that people who feel that some terrible tobacco company is trying to get round the advertising ban will contact the DTI because it deals with trade and industry, consumer affairs and so on. That would be incorrect. 
 One of the problems that arises when one says that the funding is with the local authority is how it gets that funding. The money going to local authorities generally comes from the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions; not much money comes from the Department of Health. The mechanisms are getting confused because social services are funded partly by the health budget. Those are complications that we should understand when we discuss the clause. We must ensure that we get clarity. 
 I know that Labour Members are keen to ensure that this is a workable Bill. What will happen when an officer from their trading authorities contacts them to say, ``You were on that Committee. I've just realised that we've got to have an extra body to deal with this. Can you contact the Government and get the funding?'' I am sure that they will have to ask to whom they should write to get the additional funding. The appropriate Minister is at the Department of Health, but I do not think that the Department of Health has a budget to send down to the trading standards people in whatever local authority it is. The clause is creating further confusion about the way in which these things should be funded. 
 Subsection (5) enables the Secretary of State to take over proceedings. When a local authority is faced with activities that are clearly not only local, but of a wider nature, we should not just have the Secretary of State saying, ``Well, I have plenty of money at the Department of Health and I do not need to buy any new cancer drugs so I will come and take over the prosecution and spend £200,000 on the activities of that tobacconist.'' We should tell the Department of the Health that if that is what it wants, it should take over prosecutions in specified circumstances, not that it may do so. Passing the buck is not the right way to proceed here. 
 Subsection (7) brings us to the magistrates courts. I am sure that hon. Members can tell me the sort of penalties that could be imposed. I assume that offences will be triable within a magistrates court and that the fines and penalties should be fairly minimal. If a major tobacco company has spent a lot of money on an advert that we think is caught by the Bill and a local authority says that it is aware of its duty to act, it is strange that the case is simply triable within a magistrates court with no jury. 
 I am not an expert in what happens when cases move up from magistrates courts to the Crown court, but the Minister owes it to the Committee to explain how a major multi-million pound campaign—£100 million is spent on promoting tobacco products in this country—will be affected by the legislation. There will be attempts to find loopholes. Local authorities may be prepared to carry out their duty and spend ratepayers' money on taking a case to court, but the magistrates will be able to inflict only three months in jail or whatever maximum penalty such a court can apply. Will the Minister explain exactly how the provisions will operate? Will the hundreds of thousands of pounds that a local authority might have to pay to bring cases to court be commensurate with the penalties that could be imposed?

Yvette Cooper: I am surprised that we have taken up so much time debating this clause, which is pretty standard stuff. It sets out which bodies and which Ministers are responsible. If the hon. Member for South Dorset had bothered to read the Bill, his comments might have been substantially shorter. The clause reflects the work of local trading standards officers who enforce consumer protection or under-age sales provisions. Nothing weird is going on. The clause is completely in tune with the work of trading standards officers, who are properly defined and know exactly who they are.

Ian Bruce: The hon. Lady adopts the terminology of trading standards, but it is not in the Bill. What explains the switch from her terminology to what is in the Bill?

Yvette Cooper: The language in the Bill is perfectly appropriate to identify the precise organisations and agencies that will be responsible for carrying out the provisions. ``Trading standards officers'' is a broad term to encompass the relevant authorities. It is sensible. There is no confusion. As I said, trading standards officers know exactly who they are and exactly what they will have to enforce. It is set out in the Bill. Opposition Members are wasting time over straightforward matters. If they had bothered to talk to local trading standards officers, they would realise that the provisions are no big deal.

Ian Bruce: The Minister continues to talk about trading standards officers, but they are not specified in the Bill. Trading standards officers are simply not described. The clause refers to the weights and measures authority, which is not the same terminology. A local authority worried about having to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds might well say, ``We are not a weights and measures authority. That is fine. We can shrug our shoulders; there is nobody to enforce the Act.''

Yvette Cooper: The enforcement authorities know exactly who they are. They are properly defined in the Bill. I am trying not to waste the Committee's time by listing them every single time that I refer to trading standards officers. Clause 12(1) expressly states that ``enforcement authority'' means:
 ``(a) in England and Wales, a weights and measures authority; 
 (b) in Scotland, a local weights and measures authoritiy; and 
 (c) in Northern Ireland, a district council.'' 
If I have to refer to that every time that I mention trading standards officers, the Committee's debate on the clause will take even longer than it has already. I am trying to move the Committee on to substantive issues. 
 Legitimate questions were asked about resources. The Department of Health will fund the training of local authority enforcement officers. Resources for enforcement will be allocated in the usual way—through the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. 
 Hon. Members asked whether the Bill would result in a huge number of investigations and prosecutions. I remind the Committee that the approach of trading standards officers is first to draw attention to offences and then to educate to prevent or end offences in the simplest, swiftest way. Prosecution is not trading standards officers' first action; court proceedings are the last resort. The Local Authorities Co-ordinating body on Food and Trading Standards has discussed the issue with the Department and much of what is proposed will fit well into its existing work to prevent under-age sales, especially in the light of the new enforcement protocol that has been drawn up to tackle that problem. 
 The clause will allow Ministers to take on a prosecution to enforce the measure, but we would not normally expect that to happen, as we have great confidence in the local trading standards authorities' ability to monitor and to prosecute under the terms of the Bill. However, it is appropriate for the Secretary of State or the Minister to have the power to prosecute in an especially costly and complicated case which requires lots of evidence. It is hard to envisage such a case, but it might be one that involves brand sharing or a related matter. However, it is important for that power to be in the Bill to ensure that it is properly enforced when, for example, there is a complicated and costly prosecution that might be difficult for a local trading standards organisation to pursue.

Ian Bruce: From what the Minister is saying, it appears that she did not include in the list of matters that the Secretary of State would normally take over, something that covers the whole country, which I assumed would have been included in the regulations. If we are talking about advertisements in national newspapers it would be extremely difficult for a local authority to say, ``We're going to spend our money on The Daily Telegraph advertising'' for example, when that clearly covers the whole country. I would have assumed that the Government had a mechanism to pick that up.

Yvette Cooper: Individual cases would need to be considered on their merits, but we do not expect the Bill to result in huge numbers of prosecutions. The tobacco industry has told us that it intends to comply with the law, and we hope that it will do so. Trading standards officers attempt to resolve an issue, to educate and to draw attention to offences before there is a need to prosecute. The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to prosecute when it is necessary and the case is complicated or costly. However, we are confident that local trading standards authorities will be perfectly competent and able to implement and enforce the Bill. That is their job and that is what that they will do.

Caroline Spelman: Clause 12 is important and I ask the Minister to reconsider it on Report, because it is not just Government Departments and legislators who will have to work with it. If the clause were expressed in the vernacular, everyone who read it might understand it, but ordinary mortals might read it and wonder whether a new weights and measures authority is to come into existence.

Ernie Ross: This is time-wasting.

Caroline Spelman: It is not time-wasting; I am making an important point and it is unnecessary to get frustrated about it.
 Question put and agreed to. 
 Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 13 - Powers of entry, etc.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Caroline Spelman: I hope that hon. Gentlemen will not become irritated and frustrated as we debate this clause. They must accept that the practical working of the powers of entry is an important aspect of the Bill that has not been debated before. We spent two full Committee sittings debating the powers of entry during proceedings on the Food Standards Bill in 1999, but now we are being asked to hurry up. It is important to devote the appropriate time to discussion of how the clause will work in practice. I warn Labour Members that I have several questions for the Minister.

Ian Bruce: Am I to believe, from the expressions of concern about the timetabling, that it was Conservative Members who decided to complete the Committee stage of the Bill in four days? Or was the timetable imposed on us by a motion tabled by the Government?

Caroline Spelman: The first time that I saw the date of 8 February was on the printed programme motion. Other Bills came out of Committee on the same day, for some mysterious reason, which is probably not unconnected with the imminent general election. We are all trying to read the tea leaves on that.
 Clause 13 deals with powers of entry. That important matter will affect people. The stakes are high when an enforcement officer is required to use powers of entry. It quite often becomes public knowledge that an investigation has taken place, and stigma attaches to the individual who has been investigated. We must help the Government to find the right balance for powers of entry. We accept that enforcement has to be effective. 
 My first question to the Minister relates to clause 13(1)(a), which states that an exception is made for a private dwelling house. I wish to place it on record that I desire legitimately to protect people's domestic property when it is used only for its proper purpose. I have, however, a major concern about enforcement of the ban on tobacco advertising, which is linked to our fundamental concern about the effect of the Bill on illegally smuggled tobacco. At present, there is good reason to suspect that there are non-commercial premises where contraband is stored prior to sale. Although this is anecdotal—I have not physically witnessed it—I fear that more often than not the contraband is stored in a garage attached to the home of someone who has access to one of the famous white vans that are responsible for distributing up to 48 per cent. of the contraband cigarettes that are smoked in the north-east. 
 I am keen to close the floodgates on illegally imported tobacco. That was the key point of our amendment on Second Reading. Every time that the hon. Member for Rother Valley refers to the strategy of Conservative Members on Second Reading, he studiously omits to point out that we moved a reasoned amendment to the Bill. I am keen to impress on the Committee that the amendment was not a flat rejection of the ban on tobacco advertising; the rationale behind it was to deal with the volume of illegally imported tobacco. 
 Will the exemption for a private dwelling house include the garage? I want to see an innocent person's home protected, but can the Minister assure me that, in granting this legitimate exemption, she is satisfied that it will not prevent enforcement officers from examining whether tobacco advertising, especially of illegally imported products, is taking place if they are not able to gain entry to garages?

Nick Harvey: I am mystified by what the hon. Lady's remarks have to do with advertising or promoting tobacco. What she says is logical if the objective of the Bill is to tackle the smuggling problem, but it seems highly unlikely that the premises where the smuggled goods are to be found will be advertised.

Caroline Spelman: I do not know whether I am grateful for the hon. Member's intervention. He clearly does not do his household shopping. Those of us who go regularly to the supermarket look from time to time at the ``For Sale'' board, where people can advertise kittens or their car without the hassle of advertising it in the newspaper. For the hon. Member's information, on those boards one sees cut-price cigarettes advertised with a domestic address and telephone number. The look of bewilderment on the face of the hon. Member indicates, and I have no reason to doubt, his complete innocence in all these matters—and mine, too, in terms of ever contemplating securing illegally imported tobacco. It would not even cross my mind to do that, but the fact is that, for quite a proportion of the population, it does. It is one of the main reasons for fuelling the prevalence of smoking.
 We have not had ``advertisement'' tightly defined, and those notices appear in supermarkets all over the UK. Does the Minister think that they are advertising? An enforcement officer doing his or her weekly shopping in the supermarket might well see a little postcard on the notice board of a supermarket and think that it may open up an interesting line of inquiry because he thinks that it constitutes an advertisement. He may pursue it to the address and find that it is a private dwelling house. Under the Bill—[Interruption.] I am finding it quite hard to concentrate, Mrs. Adams. Under the Bill, he or she is currently prevented from access, and I should not wish us to tie the hands of the enforcement officers and prevent them from being able to shut something down. I think that that is a loophole.

Ian Bruce: My hon. Friend was a bit hard on the hon. Member for North Devon who clearly intervened only to demonstrate that he was actually in the Committee, which he was not on a previous occasion. Perhaps he meant to pretend that the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) was here, when she is not. That is the sort of attention to detail we are used to from the Liberal Democrats.

Irene Adams: Order. Mr. Bruce, you are really trying my patience.

Caroline Spelman: Mrs. Adams, we have no wish to try your patience. We are trying to look carefully at the effectiveness of enforcement. The same matter arises in clause 13(4), under which a justice of the peace must assess the grounds given for reasonable entry, except in a private dwelling house. I have a similar concern that we may be closing down an effective method of constraining the ever-increasing flow of illegally imported tobacco products into the UK.
 My second point was to raise, with the Minister, the wording and implication of clause 13(2). It states: 
 ``A duly authorised officer of an enforcement authority may make such purchases and secure the provision of such services as he considers necessary for the purpose of the proper exercise of his functions.'' 
In my na—ve way, I was concerned to read that, given our responsibility to use taxpayers' money being wisely, effectively and efficiently. The provision sounds suspiciously like a blank cheque. No definition or constraint is being placed on the purchases—no restriction to reasonable purchases— that the enforcement authority could make. That is a little more sinister than it appears to be. We must be wise about the whole question of illegally imported products. 
 Let us suppose that an enforcement officer breaks into a garage at an address—the Minister is going to say that he can do so—that he saw on a postcard in a supermarket, which suggested that there might be illegally imported cigarettes there. The officer may have regarded the postcard as an advertisement of the cut-price cigarettes. We are talking about the underworld, and criminal activity. Let us suppose that the officer was then caught up in the purchase of some contraband. We know that that happens in relation to other illegal substances, and I should not like to create a loophole here. An enforcement officer should have to give a better account of why such expenditure would be necessary.

John Robertson: If the hon. Lady and her party are so concerned about such matters why has she not tabled amendments on these clauses? Why are we having this discussion?

Ian Bruce: Because of the time constraints.

Irene Adams: Order.

Caroline Spelman: I repeat the outcry on my side of the Committee. We have only two sittings left and points can be dealt with in the stand part debate without having separate debates on recent amendments. That will give the Government the opportunity to amend the Bill in the way that I have suggested, adding ``reasonable'' to the clause on Report. That is what I seek.
 I am concerned about the inter-relationship between subsections (1)(d) and (3). In subsection (1)(d), the enforcement officer requires a 
``person to give him such information, or afford him such facilities and assistance, as he considers necessary for 
the purpose for which he has entered the premises. Clause 13(3) makes it clear that a 
``person is not obliged...to answer any questions or produce any document''. 
A police officer makes it clear to people who are apprehended on suspicion of a crime that any evidence that he or she gives may be—I think it goes like this—``taken down, and used in evidence against you''. I cannot remember the exact wording as no one has ever said those words to me, but we have seen enough television programmes on crime to know the phrase. 
 Will it be clear to the person initially required to give information in this case that he or she is not obliged to answer? It could be frightening when a person's premises are entered. In a state of fear, people may not be clear that they are not obliged to give information unless that fact is clearly stated to them. Will the Minister clarify whether it will be? 
 On clause 13(5), it is unfortunate that the hon. Member for Rother Valley has left the Committee, because he and I shared the experience of the proceedings on the Food Standards Bill, which contains clauses parallel to this one. We debated at length who might accompany an enforcement officer. I warn the Minister that the Bill states that, when entering premises, the enforcement officer may take with him 
``such other persons and such equipment as he considers necessary.'' 
When we debated the scope for an enforcement officer to do that under the Food Standards Bill we insisted that such other persons should be authorised. 
 The media take a great interest in scare stories and issues such as these. It is not impossible for an investigative journalist pursuing a story involving a possible conviction to find his way in unless it is specified that the person accompanying an enforcement officer must be authorised. That would not be unreasonable protection for the person into whose premises the enforcement officer has broken for the legitimate purpose of investigating whether the ban on tobacco advertising has been contravened. 
 Those are all practical points that relate to the considerable powers that have been provided to enforce the Bill. I will be interested to hear the Minister's response.

Ian Bruce: Clause 13 is long. Clearly, in the time available for the entire Committee stage we cannot go into detail, but on my first reading of the clause, I suspected that those who drafted it had been careful to consider the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Human Rights Act 1998 to try to make sure that all the appropriate authorisations were given.
 The issue is a minefield, though not of the Minister's making. Problems can arise simply from a clever lawyer saying, ``Yes, you've got all the evidence, you've done everything, other than meet this clause of this particular Act''. All the evidence that any common-sense person would consider perfectly good could then be thrown out. Unfortunately, that is happening more and more in courts. I do not in any way accuse the Minister of not trying her best to prevent that, but will she say a few words about how investigations operate under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which prevents all sorts of things, and whether that will take precedence over powers given in the Bill under discussion? 
 My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden made a point about other people being authorised to be present at an investigation with an officer. It seems sensible that a police officer authorised to investigate can take along someone else such as a technical expert. However, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, we might discover that someone on the premises has not been properly authorised. 
 I am worried about the interaction between the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. In the past a police officer, with his warrant card, was considered to have all sorts of authority. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the police officer often has to get additional authority to enter someone's premises. Certainly, the police officer has to have the entry authorised in advance by a senior officer and a magistrate in order to enter the premises unannounced. 
 I am concerned that the Bill gives only trading standards officers authorisation to enter premises. If a police officer and trading standards officer want to be authorised to investigate premises together, the magistrate may not be able to authorise the police officer because he is not listed in the Bill. Perhaps that is a semantic point. However, the issue of authorisation is problematic. Police officers should have a clear ability to investigate any crime without getting caught by interrelating Acts and Bills. 
 A further issue arises over how authorisation affects the internet. I have read the clause several times, and it does not specifically deal with the internet. I note that in excluding a private dwelling house, it says: 
``used only as a private dwelling house''. 
There might be difficulty with a police officer seeking to obtain authorisation from a magistrate for entry to a residential house that is not registered by the local authority as a business premises, but is suspected of operating as a business via the internet. It might be difficult for an officer to check whether a particular computer has been used to put out advertisements within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom courts, even if the information is being sent via an overseas outfit. If it is actually being sent from a computer in the United Kingdom, it is caught by our advertising regulations, even if it appears on someone else's computer as though it has come from overseas. I would be grateful if the Minister would discuss internet access and how it is affected by clause 13.

Peter Luff: I served on the Committee that considered the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill 2000. I emphasise that the point made by my hon. Friend is serious.
 I seek the Minister's reassurance that she feels that electronic communications can be adequately monitored using the powers in the Bill, because they are not specified in the Bill. Maybe the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 gives the Government the power that they need for that. Is the Minister satisfied that the interaction between that Act and this Bill has been properly considered? We spent a long time in Committee discussing only the enforcement issues, yet we are expected to put these proposals through in a just few minutes because of the timetable. That is a very serious issue. I hope that the Minister will consider it carefully and reassure the Committee that the issues have been properly considered by the Government because they are certainly not so considered in the Bill.

Yvette Cooper: The clause involves standard powers for enforcement, which are modelled on similar powers in other legislation, such as the Consumer Protection Act 1987 and the Food Standards Act 1999. The hon. Member for Meriden seems to be arguing that we should implement powers of entry into private homes.
 On the examples that the hon. Lady used of smuggled goods, I should point out that smuggling is illegal. The police and Customs and Excise already have powers to tackle smuggling and investigate where there are suspicions of stolen goods and so on. The Bill is about advertising, not smuggling. It is about advertising in the course of a business. If the card in Tesco that the hon. Lady described is an advert in the course of a business, it will be covered by the Bill, and Tesco might want to check that it is not committing an offence by displaying that advertisement on its board. The advertising is the offence created by the Bill, not the illegal sale of goods, which are already covered and enforced on through other legislation. The Bill is about enforcing a ban on advertising.

Ian Bruce: I am concerned about the legalistic way in which the Minister is dealing with this point. Are we right to think nothing in the clause would stop a trading standards officer walking into a normal place of business and dealing with what might be an offence by gathering information and evidence, without needing advance authority from a magistrate? I am concerned that an officer may, in the normal course of events, perhaps when visiting a shop, find a piece of evidence, but would have to rush back to receive authorisation before being allowed to collect such evidence.

Yvette Cooper: The clause provides for officers to have exactly the same kind of enforcement powers—to be able to go about their ordinary business, in other words—that they have under the Consumer Protection Act, 1987, or when they enforce underage sales regulations or the Food Safety Act 1990. We are talking about exactly the same kind of standard provision. For that reason, all the issues about the interrelationship with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 have been examined in the same way that links with the Consumer Protection Act and other Acts were.
 These are standard provisions and enforcement processes. Equally, on the issues about a person accompanying an officer, no one can enter premises unless authorised by the warrant-holder. That is the normal way of doing things. Under clause 13, the enforcement officer can require the production of any 
``book, document, data, record (in whatever form it is held)''. 
That covers internet provisions too.

Caroline Spelman: On authorisation, if the Minister consults the Food Standards Act 1999 on powers of entry and the question of accompanying persons, she will find not only that accompanying persons have to be authorised, but that they must have to produce proof of identity. That provision is missing from this Bill.

Yvette Cooper: People cannot enter premises unless authorised by the warrant-holder. The normal process is that an officer does not get a warrant unless he needs one. If it possible to conduct the business or obtain the evidence without having to have a warrant, that is what trading standards officers will do. They will obtain a warrant if they cannot otherwise obtain the evidence that they need. The clause is relatively straightforward. It covers lengthy enforcement issues, but there is nothing distinctive or unusual in that.

Peter Luff: I want to make a serious point. In the interests of brevity, perhaps I did not express myself properly earlier. If someone were thought to be publishing advertisements on the internet illegally, one might not need to enter his premises to establish that fact, but could intercept his transmissions. Does the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 give the relevant authorities the powers to enable such action to be taken, or does it empower others who are outwith the terms of the Bill? Can the Government guarantee the monitoring of electronic transmissions to ensure enforcement of its provisions? Powers of entry are not the be all and end all.

Yvette Cooper: I understand the point made by the hon. Gentleman. I shall ensure that the Bill has the right powers of enforcement. Such issues have been considered by the parliamentary draftsmen, but I shall clarify the matter later in our proceedings.

Peter Luff: Perhaps the Minister will write to me.

Yvette Cooper: I will be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman about that matter.
 Question put and agreed to. 
 Clause 13 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 14 - Obstruction, etc. of officers

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Caroline Spelman: I want to get the balance right between the need to empower enforcement officers, so that they carry out their work properly, and the need to protect those on the receiving end of such enforcement. I am worried about the way in which the Bill is drafted. It will be difficult to determine and prove whether a person has intentionally obstructed a duly authorised officer under subsection (1)(a), which is based heavily on subjectivity. It is a matter of one person's word against another's.
 It will be impossible to determine and prove whether a person has failed to comply with a requirement made of him by an officer without reasonable cause. That takes me back to an earlier debate on the difference between 
``has no reason to suspect'' 
 ``could not reasonably have known''. 
Whether a cause was reasonable will be difficult to prove. Can the Minister cite examples of what would be a reasonable cause for failure to comply with a requirement made by the enforcement officer? 
 To understand how the provision would work in practice, I tried to think of some examples. It will be a big cultural change for our nation to adjust to thinking in terms of being alert to whether something is a tobacco advertisement and who has responsibility for its display. What about a tobacco advertisement that is displayed on an office building, which may not be the offices of a company that is in the business of promoting tobacco? Can an enforcement officer search that building? 
 Would an authorised officer have the right to enter the office of someone who, for example, had a Marlboro poster on the wall? That is not an unusual occurrence. I do not have one on my wall, but I gather an attractive Marlboro man poster is particularly popular with young women whose smoking prevalence is increasing—and which we are trying to reduce. If such a poster was displayed in an office, would the enforcement officer have the right to enter it and seek to prosecute someone? That individual may not primarily regard that as tobacco advertising; but we might accept that such a poster is banned from advertisement on billboards and other places where it might encourage smoking, and its continued existence might promote tobacco consumption among colleagues in the office. I am unclear about the practicalities of the clause. How on earth can the defendant claim that obstruction was unintentional, and what constitutes a reasonable cause for failure to comply? Perhaps the Minister would illustrate that for us.

Ian Bruce: How does an individual know that another individual is authorised to require information to be given? The problem is that we set up all these Acts; we are the only people who read them; even we probably forget about them as soon as we leave the Committee; and then, lo and behold, somebody knocks on the door and says, ``I am authorised to do X, Y or Z.''
 That may sound theoretical—people do not try to assume powers that they do not have—but I am told that since the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 was passed, there has been a flood of police inquiries to internet service providers for information about various people. On many, if not most occasions, it has been discovered that police officers, who are duly authorised people, are asking for information that they are not entitled to receive, and the matter has not been sensibly dealt with. 
 In order to try to resolve that problem, it has been agreed by the National Criminal Intelligence Service that when people ask ISPs for information about telephone tracks and information going across the internet, each constabulary should have a single officer to handle all inquiries, so that the officer can check that the proper information is being asked for in the proper, authorised manner. It is important, when introducing a new criminal offence setting up a police force to police words and thoughts—we actually have a thought police here—to make it clear how people will be authorised. 
 It would be extremely helpful if there were a provision to ensure that individuals were given an appropriate form showing them their rights and responsibilities before they could be said to have caused obstruction. In other words, if somebody knocks on the door and an individual is obstructive or gives false information, the person claiming obstruction should be required to show that he or she had handed the individual an appropriate document showing his or her powers and the responsibilities of the individual for dealing with the matter. It is easy to say that virtually nobody is ever prosecuted under such clauses, but, willy-nilly, we put them into Bills, placing additional requirements on members of the public who have no real reason to be knowledgeable, though ignorance of the law is no defence. I hope that the Minister will give us the reassurances that we need to support the clause.

Peter Luff: I must support my hon. Friends. Rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, trading standards officers are not always the best loved people in local communities. They generally do a good job, but, as in the case of weights and measures involving pounds and ounces, and kilograms and grams, there is often a certain resistance to dealing with trading standards officers. That resistance may be especially prevalent among the class of people who will be caught by the Bill.
 The lack of requirement of proof of identity in clause 13 makes me nervous, as does the fact that there is no requirement to produce the warrant to prove that people are authorised to conduct the entry. This clause contains no defence that would provide someone who had reasonable grounds to doubt the identity of the person with the ability to refuse entry or co-operation. 
 The Government might think of introducing an additional defence in subsection (3), for when the individual whose premises were entered had reasonable grounds to doubt the identity of the person seeking entry. Without such a defence, the clause is a snoop's charter. More defences must be offered to citizens who could be subject to such powers of entry. The Minister did not want to introduce a requirement for greater proof at the time of entry into clause 13. Will she at least put an additional defence into this clause, to help to protect the rights of our citizens?

Yvette Cooper: Again, this is a standard clause, which establishes an offence of intentionally obstructing
``a duly authorised officer of an enforcement authority''. 
The clause is necessary to ensure that the enforcement authority has the proper powers to enforce the measures. 
 Clause 13 states: 
 ``A duly authorised officer of an enforcement authority has the right, on producing, if so required, his written authority'' 
to enter the premises. The clause therefore contains that requirement. 
 The provisions are standard ones that equally apply to parallel legislation, such as the Consumer Protection Act 1987. There should not be a serious problem with the clauses to which the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire referred, as they operate in the same way as those in previous legislation. Clause 14 rightly uses the words ``intentionally obstructs'', because it would be wrong for the clause to cover unintentional obstruction, given that it establishes a criminal offence.

Ian Bruce: My understanding is that it is not an offence for a shoplifter, for example, who has been caught by a police officer, to claim that he has not stolen anything and obstruct the officer in his investigation of the crime. A criminal would normally lie, and it is not an offence to do so; the police officer cannot prosecute someone for being unco-operative in the detection of a crime.
 The clause does not seem to be standard, because it makes it a prosecutable offence to tell a lie and say, ``It wasn't my advert, guv'nor.'' If that is standard clause, I am a Dutchman.

Yvette Cooper: This is a standard process for enforcing legislation, along the lines of the Consumer Protection Act 1987, and other such measures. It is right and appropriate to have such provisions in the Bill.
 Question put and agreed to. 
 Clause 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 15 - Penalties

Irene Adams: The question is that clause 15 stand part of the Bill.

Hon. Members: Aye.

Caroline Spelman: Labour Members are trying to jump the gun by voting through the clause before we have had a chance to debate it, but they will not get away with it. Unfortunately for them, it is my job to ensure that that does not happen without some discussion.
 The clause relates to the level of penalties that can be imposed for the offences. I am not entirely satisfied that the defences in clause 14 are as safe and sound as we would like. The provisions in clause 13 are not a mirror image of the Food Standards Act 1999, despite the fact that the explanatory notes say that there are similar provisions in the Consumer Protection Act 1987, and the Food Standards Act—they are similar, but with important differences. The fact that there are these lacunae cause the Opposition the anxiety. We are giving strong powers of entry here—[Interruption.]

Irene Adams: Order

Caroline Spelman: Thank you Mrs. Adams. I suspect that it is because speeches are off limits to Labour Members that we get a sedentary growl instead.
 The lack of mirroring of other legislation—which has been more substantially debated than it has been possible to debate the powers of entry in this Bill—is the reason for the Opposition's disquiet about the position of a person whose premises have been broken into. The penalty for obstructing an officer—if it proved impossible to convince a court that it was unintentional—would be £1,000, which is a significant sum of money. It will difficult to prove the intentions, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset said—it comes close to policing people's thoughts, which is an impossible thing to do. The penalty for any other offence on the Bill would be up to three months' imprisonment, or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, and that is £5,000. 
 These are substantial penalties, affecting often small commercial premises, such as corner shops, newsagents. We are trying to legislate for both the corporate giants of the tobacco industry, and the small businesses that may be displaying a tobacco advertisement, and no distinction is being made between the two. 
 In the case of a small newsagents, or a specialist tobacconist, who displays a tobacco advertisement, since they are very often a one-man-band, a prison sentence of three months will possibly cause their entire business to fold. In part because it may be impossible to prove intention, one way or the other, and because reasonable cause for failure to comply has not been defined. I would seek in the guidance from the regulations, to have some illustration—which I asked for in the stand part debate on clause 14—of what might be a reasonable cause. 
 My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) made the point that someone could produce a defence that they had reasonably grounds to doubt the identity of the individual trying to enforce the entry. This is particularly the case as there is some confusion over trading standards definitions, and weights and measures authority definitions, which have remained unclear. 
 The Minister thinks that there will not be many cases of enforcement, but the beginning is when there are likely to be the most cases and attempted prosecutions for failure to comply. It will take some time for this change in the law to be part of common practice. For many of those individuals, it would take a while to find out what the Bill meant. It is right to ask the Minister about the scale of the penalties and whether it is fair to legislate in this way for both big and small businesses.

Nick Harvey: My concern is the opposite of that of the hon. Member for Meriden. I took her point that this seemed to cover the span from the corner shop to the big tobacco company. I listened with interest her point about the penalties being excessive for the corner shop, but my concern is quite the opposite, that they are not much of a disincentive to the big players, when one considers the volume of business and the profits that can be made, despite the fact that advertising, although legal, costs a great deal of money.
 Clause 16 defines offences by bodies corporate. I appreciate that the existence of a three-months' term of imprisonment for someone within the body corporate is a fair disincentive, but a fine of £5,000 would come out of the petty cash box and would not be much of a deterrent if it felt inclined to give it a go. A single advert might produce revenue that would dwarf that fine. The Minister said earlier that the tobacco industry had said that it intended to comply with the Bill—I believe that to be so, and I hope that it will prove to be so—but, when enacted, the legislation will continue for some time and one does not know whether in future a business might be inclined to try its luck.

Ian Bruce: I join hon. Members in their opposition to these offences. More needs to be said, however, about the special offence that is being created, with a fine of £1,000—and, no doubt, a criminal record to go with it. I shall not go down the route of what constitutes a criminal record, but I think that the individual would have one and might not be able to hold a licence to sell alcohol, which could be serious for their business.
 Under clause 14, a duly authorised officer could go into a shop and, if he saw what he thought was a criminal offence in terms of advertising at a point of sale that had broken the regulations, could interview an individual and say ``Who provided the information? Who said you should use this type of display on your premises?'' There is no requirement in law for the shopkeeper to have a lawyer with him and he could not say, ``Whoa, hang on a minute. I won't answer your questions until I've got my lawyer here to advise me.'' He could turn to the officer and say, ``Oh I've no idea who provided this.'' When it was shown by the officer later that the shopkeeper knew exactly which sales rep had put it in, he could be fined £1,000 under clause 15 for having knowingly given a false answer, yet on further investigation it may have been found that the display was legal, so that someone who was not breaking the law on advertising was being fined for not being helpful to the officer who asked where the advertising material had come from, and for trying to deny it. 
 There is no requirement that, before anyone answers questions, they should be cautioned that anything they might say could be taken down and, if untrue, could lead to prosecution. An authorised officer is not required to say to a person, ``I'm going to ask you some questions and I think you should get your lawyer here, because you could end up with a criminal conviction and a fine of £1,000.'' To have that on the record could be serious for that person's future, if they wanted to stand as a parliamentary candidate, become a magistrate, take out a licence to sell alcohol or run a night club. 
 I hate ever having to agree with the Liberal Democrats, but the hon. Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey) made a sensible point. The tobacco industry and the people who sign up as members of the Tobacco Merchants Association are responsible corporate beings in terms of the law. I do not expect them to say, ``Let us break the law,'' but individual tobacco companies and individual retailers and wholesalers of tobacco will test this law. The company secretary might be liable for three months in prison but, as we all know, the magistrates courts do not imprison people for things like this, especially on a first offence. That the maximum fine is £5,000 is nonsensical. 
 What are we all doing here spending our time debating this Bill, if the Minister is saying, ``We have this Bill, it is full of loopholes but it provides something that was put in the Labour Party manifesto.''? With a £5,000 fine it is almost unenforceable. We know that a case involving 30p worth of bananas is costing the prosecuting authority over £200,000. We are saying to individual local councils that if they found the most blatant situation of a national organisation running an event such as a rave, with lots of free tobacco—

David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is making an important and interesting point in a characteristic way. Is it not the case that, where large corporations are prosecuted in local courts for particular offences, the main problem that they have, and that which they fear, is not the fine—as the hon. Member for North Devon said, that could be found in their petty cash box—but the publicity, which is far more of a sanction, in general terms?

Ian Bruce: The hon. Gentleman makes a point. I was not suggesting that Imperial Tobacco would not be put off by that, although we have had lots of speeches from the hon. Member for Rother Valley saying that these tobacco companies do not give a damn about public opinion and killing people. I do not necessarily go down that route, but—

Kevin Barron: I have never used the expressions that the hon. Member mentions, and I never would do. Only 50 per cent. of people die prematurely by smoking tobacco.

Ian Bruce: I am not sure what that point is, but I follow the hon. Gentleman. One cannot say that too often, but I am not sure how that relates to clause 15. Worse than having these penalties is the death penalty for people who ignore the dangers of tobacco. Perhaps we ought to include this as a sub-clause (3) and Ministers ought to remind people that there is a death penalty for not realising how dangerous tobacco is.
 If the Government and Parliament have decided on a particular Bill, it should be enforceable and the penalties should be commensurate. The Opposition do not believe in the thought police. We want a situation where people can reasonably say, ``This is an offence. Stop it.'' Hopefully, that will be the effect of the clause. We also have to take into account situations where an organisation has deliberately and blatantly decided to find a loophole. First, it will try to make it difficult to identify the appropriate officer who should be sent to prison. There will be all sorts of cut outs, such as who actually agreed the advertisement. If it were a company secretary of an organisation—that is normally what the position is—one would have to make sure that the company secretary was not resident in the Cayman Islands, as there would be no jurisdiction there to say ``I must have this individual removed from the jurisdiction and prosecuted.'' 
 The very element of three months brings in a number of different points. I think thatI am right to say that we cannot extradite somebody on the basis of a three-months' prison sentence. I think I am also correct to say that, for instance, a police officer cannot burst into a premises in hot pursuit without a warrant if the offence for which the person is being arrested carries a penalty of less than six months' imprisonment. The low penalties cause some problems for enforcement authorities. 
 The Minister needs to tell us, on behalf of the Government, why she has decided first, that somebody should be prosecuted and fined simply for saying to an officer, ``I do not know about that,'' when they did, even if no other offence is being committed and secondly, why somebody who has blatantly gone against the wishes of Parliament should have their penalty limited to £5,000 with only a three-month fine in terms of the enforcement powers that police and other authorities normally have.

Peter Luff: The whole Bill rests on this clause, because if the penalties for breaking the terms of the eventual Act are not adequate, then the Act is just a toothless tiger. It is really important that this is looked at. The Minister is looking as though she is in less than her normally benign mood, but this is a genuinely important issue.

Ian Bruce: The Minister's smile has come back and we are glad but I think she was simply sitting there and thinking, ``Crumbs I have spent all this time and effort and I have got a toothless tiger.'' She is very disappointed to hear that.

Peter Luff: I hope she may think that because the Opposition find itself in a difficult position. We have reservations about the Bill, and whether it will have the effects that the Government claim that it will, but we do not want a Bill that will not work to pass into law. Bad legislation is in no one's interest. I agree with the hon. Member for North Devon very strongly, for reasons that I will explain, that this may be the case as a result of this clause.
 The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) talked about the effect of reputation on a company. That is the case for the major tobacco companies. They will be fearful and they will respect the terms of this legislation. In that sense, the larger game is won. It is the smaller players who worry me. 
 In my constituency there is a company that has consistently and persistently broken the terms of environmental law. It has taken years and years of fines. The company is called Ivory Plant Hire and it has been caught endlessly and the magistrates have consistently imposed inadequate fines on them. It has not been embarrassed by the adverse publicity in local papers; it has continued to livery its lorries and run them around my constituency proudly, breaking the law consistently and persistently. 
 I understand that, yesterday, at last the fines reached such a level that the company went into voluntary liquidation—I do not know the terms of that. It has taken years to get there and during that time my constituents' lives have been made a complete and utterly misery because the courts, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset rightly said, were reluctant to imprison anyone. The firm had to be encouraged to realise the seriousness of the situation by the various enforcement authorities—the police, the Environment Agency, the district council, the county council and the traffic commissioners. All these people were up in arms against the activities of the company but it carried on breaking the law because the level of the fine imposed upon it was inadequate to deter it from its criminal activity. It is a real problem. 
 My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden rightly expressed concerns about the small companies—the small retail tobacconist who makes a genuine error—for whom the fine might be excessive, but the fine is not adequate for companies that are determined to break the law. There is a real precedent here. I understood that, for many years, tobacco advertising was illegal in Italy yet every publication in that wonderful country regularly carried tobacco advertisements, for the simple reason that the fine was so small that the advertising agencies just factored it into their costs and carried on. Although Italy could claim with all conscience that it had banned advertising, tobacco advertising was widespread throughout the country. 
 There is a real issue here for the Government to address. Are they satisfied that these fines are adequate to deal with both medium-size wholesalers and retailers, operating at regional or local level, or possibly, and perhaps more worryingly, by larger operators who decide to move into the vacuum— 
 It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, THE CHAIRMAN adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order. 
 Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o'clock.